Abstract: In this paper, we present Development of computer aided environment for drawing (to set) fill in the
blanks that can generate for given paragraph. The System finds fill in the blanks, blanking key generates from
the selected statement. Syntactic and lexical features are used in this process. NLP parser is used, part of speech
taggers are applied on each of these sentences to encode necessary information.
We present our work in designing and implementing the system which generate the blanks. The System is
developed in Java using JDBC which is open source.
Keyword: Natural Language Processing NLP, Key selection, POS tagging, Sentence selection

I. Introduction
Now a day, increasing in population affects the number of students in every education stream. If we
compare the scenario before 10 to 15 years with the current scenario, the number of students in each stream
increases rapidly.
In any educational system, student has to appear for the examination to determine their performance and
depending upon their performance they will be promoted for the next year. To evaluate the performance of the
student different evaluation methods i.e. examination system are implemented. Fill in the blank questions where
one or more words are removed from a sentence/paragraph, are easy to evaluate. Preparing this question
manually required lots of time and efforts so with the help of this system teacher can automatically generate the
fill in the blanks question from given paragraph.
Some of the earlier attempts in generating fill in the blanks are given below:
One of the first automatic question generation systems proposed for supporting learning activities was
AUTOQUEST [2]. Used pattern matching approach to generate question from one of the sentences and grade
the student answer. The purpose of these questions is to help novices to learn English.
Automatic gaps fill question generation system by Manish Agrawal and prashant mannem [4] generates fill in
the blanks with options generated from text book without external resources except the document from text
book. Sentence Selection, Key Selection and distractor are selected from chapter only. POS tagger and typed
dependency is used for generating question.
TEDDCLOG [5] System take input as key and finds distractor from distributional thesaurus and find the
sentence having inputted key and does not have distractor. Then system presents the sentence with distractor for
approval, modification and rejection.
MCTI [6] system is semi automatic system consist following task Key Term Extraction, Source Clause
Selection, Transformation to stem and Distractor Selection. In this system first key Term Identification is done
than on that basis sentence And then Transformation of stem means convert the sentence into wh-phrase. And
last distractors are created.
Computer aided multiple choice test items [8] is created post-editing interface where term extraction, sentence
transformation, and for distractor selection Wordnet and corpus external resources were used. In this system
post editing is used and user friendly interface is used for modification of question. And provide list of multiple
distractor, user can select distractorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s from that list for MCQ generated by system.
Most of the system approaches use is to select key first, and then sentence is selected. We have given priority to
sentence and then from the important sentence key is extracted.
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Computer aided environment for drawing (to set) fill in the blank from given paragraph.

II. Model And Methodology
The following goals were set for the proposed computerized system for drawing question paper, from given
paragraph:
Fill in the blanks questions are generated from it in two stages: sentence selection and key selection Sentence
selection involves identifying sentences in the paragraph which can be used to generate question. These
sentences are then processed in the key selection stage to identify the key on which to ask the question.

Architecture of System
In the Architecture of the system, User will input the paragraph, through interactive user friendly editor.

Figure 1 : Architecture of System
In this approach user will enter the paragraph from the system. And extract the sentences and select the
important sentence from the given paragraph. Using certain features which are explained below, then key list is
generated from the important sentence selection. From the key list, potential key is extracted from system and
blank is generated from the given paragraph.

Sentence Selection
In Sentence Selection module goes through all sentences from given paragraph and used NLP Stanford parser
which parser the sentences and divided into small fragments called token. And from that token POS tagger is
used, which provides a representation of grammatical relations between words in a sentence. And extract a set of
features like,
Count number of Sentences: Paragraph entered count number of sentences from that paragraph.
Count number of words: Count number of words in the sentence. Short sentence generate unanswerable
question because short content and very long content might have enough content to make the question
generated.
Count number of nouns: Noun gives an idea about the sentences, if maximum number of noun in sentence
means potential key can be generated from that sentence and that sentence having good content which can
generate the key for fill in the blanks.
Superlative: Superlative degree defines exaggerated mode of expression or height of quality. Superlative are
typically formed with suffix â&#x20AC;&#x201C;est (healthiest) or the word most, good, best are used. Sentence which contains
superlative degree can generate good fill in the blanks.
On the basis of these features important sentence will be extracted from the given paragraph.

Algorithm for sentence selection
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

6.

Enter the paragraph P
Read the statements from the paragraph S.
Calculate number of sentences CtS.
Calculate number of words from each sentence CtW
For each CtNoun and CtSuper from S do
Select the sentence which contains superlative degree and then calculate maximum number of
nouns which contain superlative degree.
IF CtSuper and CtNoun from S then
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Computer aided environment for drawing (to set) fill in the blank from given paragraph.

7.

SetenceSelected SS
ElseIF Max (CtNoun) from S then
SetenceSelected SS
If there is no superlative degree then select that sentence which having maximum number of
noun
Else
Without Noun and Superlative degree, blanks will not generated
EndIF
EndFor
Display SentenceSelected SS

Key Selection
Key selection is most important stage, to identify the key from important sentence to ask the question on.
Previous work in this area, [5] takes key as input and [6] select key on basis of regular expression on noun. Or
first search the key and then basic sentence is selected. Our key selection approach is divided into two stages.
Generate Potential keys from the statement and select Best Key form that key list [4].
First Stage: Potential keys are generated from selected sentences, POS tagger is used to identify the words and
there type. Suppose we need to generate key for noun then select total numbers of noun available in sentence
and list them, and if any noun word is repeated in that list, it would be removed from list [4].
Second Stage: Best keys are generated from the key-list, select the word from key-list and search that word in
paragraph. Count how many times that word has been used in paragraph. Select best key which has found in
selected sentence and noun repeated in paragraph maximum number of times.
In our system we have used Stanford parser through which POS tagger will use for inputted paragraph.

Algorithm for key selection
1.

2.

For Each Word from SS do
From selected sentence extract the potential key now suppose we need to generate key of noun then
extract the nouns from the sentence. And add them into the keylist.
KeyList =Select Noun from SS
BestKey = No of Occurrence of that key in SS and Height of that key in the syntactic tree Structure.
End For
Remove that BestKey from sentence SS and generate Fill in the blanks.

So this way system will generate the fill in the blanks from given paragraph, below figure shows the how system
works when user entered user enters the paragraph with example.

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Computer aided environment for drawing (to set) fill in the blank from given paragraph.

Figure 2: Process flow diagram of System

III. Evaluation And Result
The System has tested with number of small and simple paragraph. The table shows some of the
implementation of paragraphs, first sentence is selected on the basis of the features describes earlier and best
key is selected from the selected sentence and then fill in the blanks is generated from the given paragraph. And
Figure 3 shows screen short of the system how system generates the fill in the blanks. The system is developed
in Java using JDBC for generating fill in the blanks.
No.

Entered Paragraph

Selected Sentence

1

Rajkot is clean City . In Rajkot there
are many beautiful places where we
can go for outing . Rajkot City is part
of Gujarat .
Shrusti is the most sincere student in
the class . while soniya is the most
mischievous student. In fact Shrusti
and soniya are most regular student.
While kruti is the most beautiful
student. Overall my class is the best
of all.
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar born 24
April 1973. Sachin is a former Indian
cricketer widely acknowledged as the
greatest batsman of the modern.
Sachin took up cricket at the age of
eleven, made his Test debut against
Pakistan at the age of sixteen, and
went on to represent Mumbai
domestically and India internationally
for close to twenty-four years.
Butterflies are one of the most
beautiful and interesting creatures on
earth. Butterflies attractive, brilliant
colors catch interest immediately.
They have wings of varying shapes
and sizes, and some even appear to

Rajkot City is part of
Gujarat

2

3

4

Key
selected
Rajkot

Fill in the blank
generated.
____________City
part of Gujarat

In fact Shrusti and soniya
are most regular student.

Shrusti

In fact _________ and
soniya are most regular
student

Sachin took up cricket at
the age of eleven, made his
Test debut against Pakistan
at the age of sixteen, and
went on to represent
Mumbai domestically and
India internationally for
close to twenty-four years.

Sachin

Butterflies are one of the
most
beautiful
and
interesting creatures on
earth

Butterflies

____________took
up
cricket at the age of
eleven , made his Test
debut against Pakistan at
the age of sixteen , and
went on to represent
Mumbai
domestically
and India internationally
for close to twenty-four
years
___________ are one of
the most beautiful and
interesting creatures on
earth

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Computer aided environment for drawing (to set) fill in the blank from given paragraph.
have eyes on them.

5

The peacock is the national bird of
India. They have colourful feathers,
two legs and a small beak. They are
famous for their dance. When a
peacock dances it spreads its feathers
like a fan. It has a long shiny dark
blue neck. Peacocks are mostly found
in the fields they are very beautiful
birds. The females are known as
'Peahen. Their feathers are used for
making jackets, purses etc. We can
see them in a zoo.

The peacock is the national
bird of India

Peacock

The ____________is the
national bird of India

Table :1 Example of Paragraphs tested in system.

Figure 3: A Sample Screen short of the system.

IV. Conclusion And Future Work
The system select important sentence from the given paragraph, and generate fill in the blanks question
on them. Syntactic features helped in quality of fill in the blanks generated. We look forward to generate large
number of blanks from the given paragraph as well as generate MCQS and True or False from given paragraph.
Evaluation of Single blank generated is done in Java with the help of Stanford parser.